The Impact of Information Technology on Productivity in Developing Countries

The information technology (IT) revolution has resulted in a digital divide evolving between nations that have the skills and capability to absorb these new technologies, and those without. Since developing countries have assumed that the adoption of IT may be their key engine of growth, they have exerted a lot of efforts in an attempt to overcome this digital gap. This study tests whether higher IT adoption results in higher total factor productivity (TFP) growth of developing countries or not, by conducting a panel data regression for 33 developing countries over the period 2002-2006. It also examines the relative importance of IT adoption in comparison to other technological aspects such as: Technology creation, technology transfer, and enhancing individuals’ technological absorptive capacities through higher educational levels. The study concludes that IT adoption and higher educational attainment tend to relatively be the most significant factors affecting TFP growth in developing countries.Information Technology, Productivity, Digital Divide, Development

Industrialization in Egypt: Historical Development and Implications for Economic Policy

Although Egypt has begun industrialization long ago (1920's), it is still lagging far behind other countries that have begun the industrialization process much later than Egypt. The arising problem is that the Egyptian manufactures' sector is facing a deteriorating position in terms of trade, as the Egyptian economy faces competitive pressures from three fronts: First, countries within the MENA region which opened up their economies early and took positive measures to increase their competitiveness such as Tunisia and Morocco. Second, East Asian economies and European transition economies which are characterized by having more efficient productive structures using skilled labor and capital intensive activities and hence produce higher value added and better quality goods. Third, the large unskilled, labor abundant, low wage economies such as China, India and Bangladesh that have been integrating rapidly in the global economy, exerting growing competitiveness pressures on countries exporting low-skilled manufactures such as Egypt. This paper deduces that the constraints to having a booming industrial sector are related to the inefficient human resource development, technical constraints, legislative constraints and economic constraints. Accordingly, the paper recommends having more investments in human development, building the capabilities of the public sector, more enhancements for the small industries, and managing the process of integration in the global economy.Industrial development, industrial policy

Egyptian Jatropha oil extraction for biodiesel production

Biodiesel is the most desirable biofuel economically andtechnically and it can be made from any vegetable oil. InEGYPT jatropha oil seems to be the best source for biodiesel production because jatropha tree is easily growing and easily propagated.Also jatropha tree thrives in marginal and desert areas that are unable to support crops and it can be irrigated with primary treated municipal wastewater.The main purpose of this investigation is to compare andoptimize the oil yield extracted from jatropha seeds on both bench and pilot scale.Different solvents under different extraction conditions were studied to determine optimum solvent type, solid: liquid ratio and extraction time which gave maximum oil yield.Oil extracted specifications, losses in seeds dehulling &washing, losses in solvent used and extracted meal analysis& uses were also concluded

Biodiesel production from Jatropha seeds using heterogeneous integrated extraction reaction process

Integrated extraction and transesterification process forbiodiesel production from Jatropha Curcas (JCL) seeds using hexane and methanol via base catalyzed transesterificationis reported in this paper.The effects of reaction time, catalyst dose, liquid to solidratio, type of solvent and grain size of JCL seeds onbiodiesel production were investigated. It was found thathexane played the role of both co – solvent and co – extractantwhich enhanced the efficiency of oil extraction and facilitated mass transfer. The highest biodiesel yield (90.8%) was obtained at hexane to seed ratio of 5:1 (vol /wt), methanol to seed ratio 1:1 (vol /wt), activated Ca O of 1% by wt of seeds, stirring speed 700 rpm, temperature of 70°C at reaction time 6 hours

Whipworms in humans and pigs: origins and demography

© 2016 Hawash et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Ascaris phylogeny based on multiple whole mtDNA genomes

Ascaris lumbricoides and A. suum are two parasitic nematodes infecting humans and pigs, respectively. There has been considerable debate as to whether Ascaris in the two hosts should be considered a single or two separate species. Previous studies identified at least three major clusters (A, B and C) of human and pig Ascaris based on partial cox1 sequences. In the present study, we selected major haplotypes from these different clusters to characterize their whole mitochondrial genomes for phylogenetic analysis. We also undertook coalescent simulations to investigate the evolutionary history of the different Ascaris haplotypes. The topology of the phylogenetic tree based on complete mitochondrial genomic sequences was found to be similar to partial cox1 sequencing, but the support at internal nodes was higher in the former. Coalescent simulations suggested the presence of at least two divergence events: the first one occurring early in the Neolithic period which resulted in a differentiated population of Ascaris in pigs (cluster C), the second occurring more recently (~ 900 generations ago), resulting in clusters A and B which might have been spread worldwide by human activities

Discussing Fuzzy Reliability Estimators of Function of Mixed Probability Distribution By Simulation

يتناول هذا البحث تقدير المعولية الضبابية لتوزيع احتمالي مختلط يتكون من مزج التوزيع الاسي ذو المعلمة (β) ,مع توزيع كاما ذي المعلمتين  (2,β), وان معلمات المزج هي (  ,وقد تم اشتقاق الدالة الاحتمالية والتراكمية وكذلك دالة المعولية , وتم تقدير المعلمات بطريقة الإمكان الأعظم وطريقة العزوم وطريقة المربعات الصغرى , وبعد اشتقاق المقدرات بالطرائق الثلاث, أجريت تجارب محاكاة لمقارنة النتائج وإيجاد مقدر المعولية الضبابي الذي يحقق اصغر متوسط مربعات خطأ.This paper deals  with constructing mixed probability distribution  from exponential with scale parameter (β) and also Gamma distribution with (2,β), and the mixed proportions are (  .first of all, the probability density function (p.d.f) and also cumulative distribution function (c.d.f) and also the reliability function are obtained. The parameters of mixed distribution, ( ,β)  are estimated by three different methods, which are  maximum likelihood, and  Moments method,as well proposed method (Differential Least Square Method)(DLSM).The comparison is done using simulation procedure, and all the results are explained in tables

Prenatal Stress and Birth Weight: Evidence from the Egyptian Revolution

The Egyptian Revolution that ignited in January 2011 resulted in intense violent conflict between protestors and former regime allies. This generated a significant amount of fear and stress among people who lived in proximity to such events. We use this exogenous shock as a natural experiment to test the causal relationship between prenatal stress and birth weight. Governorate-level fatalities resulting from this conflict will be used as an exogenous indicator for prenatal stress. Using fixed effects and difference-in-difference analysis, results show that higher prenatal stress resulting from political conflict during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy has a significant negative impact on child birth weight. This finding is robust to restricting the sample to siblings’ data and using mother fixed effects, suggesting that neither observable nor unobservable characteristics of mothers are driving the results

Surface Science Study of Perovskite Solar Cells: Spiro-MeOTAD Hole Transport Material and Perovskite Absorber

　The past few years have witnessed an emergence of an outstanding class of thin film solar cells, which are based on organic-inorganic light absorbers, namely, perovskite solar cells (PSCs). PSCs possess energy conversion efficiencies (PCEs) comparable to traditional silicon and other solar cell technologies. To achieve high efficiencies, typically perovskite materials are sandwiched between selective contacts, which significantly facilitate charge carries extraction. These contacts are made of either electron or hole selective material and are called electron transport material (ETM) and hole transport material (HTM). This thesis discusses surface science aspects of the doping mechanism of spiro-MeOTAD HTM, and an engineering approach of the perovskite/spiroMeOTAD HTM interface for enhanced energy level alignment, efficiency, and reproducibility. In this thesis surface science techniques (i.e., photoemission spectroscopy (PES), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and scanning electron microscopy(SEM)) combined with currentdensity voltage (J-V) measurements on hole only devices and PSCs are employed. PES measurements revealed that ambient air-exposure results in the migration of the commonly used Li-salt dopants from the bottom to the bulk (including top surface) of the spiro-MeOTAD HTM film. AFM and SEM images revealed the presence of pinholes with an average diameter of ~135 nm, with a density of ~3.72 holes/µm2, and these pinholes form channels wiggling across the doped spiro-MeOTAD film. Under controlled environments of H2O (relative humidity 90%) and dry O2, PES measurements revealed that H2O is the constituent component in ambient air that leads to the redistribution of the LiTFSI dopants. In addition, the J-V measurement results on hole only devices revealed that H2O vapor exposure results in an irreversible enhancement of LiTFSI-doped HTM conductivity due to redistribution of the LiTFSI dopants across the HTM film, which was examined by PES measurements. On the contrary, O2 exposure results in a reversible enhancement of the HTM film under applied bias, in which this enhancement is mainly due to O2 doping, which was confirmed by PES measurements. In addition, to achieve better energy level alignment between the HTM and the perovskite absorber, an intentional deposition of an ultrathin layer of methylammonium iodide (MAI) on top of a methylammonium lead iodide (MAPI) perovskite film was implemented. Using PES measurements, it was found that the deposition of small amount of MAI on top of MAPI results in an interfacial, favorable, energy-level tuning of the MAPI film. XPS measurements revealed that the enhanced energy-level tuning was from MAI dissociated species, not the MAI itself. Furthermore, the optimized energetics were verified using perovskite solar cells. Substantially enhanced stabilized-PCE and reproducibility was achieved (from 15 ± 2% to 17.2 ± 0.4%).Okinawa Instituteof Science and Technology Graduate Universit